MR | Second Edition, November 2013

The brew day at Bacchus turned out to be an exciting day. It’s the first time I’ve had a hand in making a beer that probably won’t be a total disaster. The only downside was the hours of interminable waiting while the beers finished boiling and were pumped into fermenters. I suspect that one person doing six 50L beers would be kept very busy but splitting the workload amongst seven people leads to a lot of standing around. Fortunately, we got a stack of Untappd checkins in the interim.

Of all the tweets that I saw over the weekend, this one in particular stood out. Posted on Sunday afternoon by an Irish microbrewery based in Meath, it apparently shows a severed beer line in a pub cellar. The owners of the Brú Brewery have alleged that this was done, deliberately, by one of the ‘big commercial breweries’ – and, moreover, that it has ‘happened to us a good few times over the last 3 weeks’.

I came up with the concept of MoVemBeer, a grass-roots movement (it was basically contained to my Beer Blokes blog and read by as many as three or four people on a good day) designed specifically for blokes who wanted to do the right thing but didn’t want to be lumped into the same hairsuit company as other blokes who thought they looked good with a Mo. Hitler, Stalin and Ricky Gervais spring to mind.

This year’s Perth Royal Beer Show has thrown up some eye-catching winners alongside the usual familiar faces. There will have been a heavily-laden plane heading back to Sydney too after New South Wales brewers came, saw and conquered, taking home five trophies. But while serial winners Redoak, of Sydney, will have been cheered by another three gongs to add to their incredible haul this year, perhaps the biggest smile will have been on the face of the head brewer at Indian Ocean Brewing.

In a trading update released this morning, CCA said it had signed a long-term exclusive agreement with the Boston Beer Company to distribute Samuel Adams, America’s largest selling craft beer, effective from mid-December.

“The Boston Beer Company is America’s leading brewer of handcrafted, full-flavoured beers and has won more awards in the last five years than any other brewery in the world,” said CCA CEO Terry Davis.

Can you still open a brewery on the promise of a big IPA, a hop garden, and a pizza oven?

Unlike the tiny breweries opening weekly here in Oregon, Worthy Brewing went full speed from the start with a three acre brewery and a 60,000 barrel capacity. It’s a big expensive gamble, but it seems to be fairly run of the mill.

As first reported on The New School in early June, downtown Portland’s popular BrewCycle Portland bicycle pub tour operation has opened a taphouse of its own called the BrewStop. You may have seen–if not ridden–on Brewcycle’s large, 10-seat rolling covered bar around a number of spots, primarily in the Pearl District of NW Portland. The successful biz has 3 different bikes to accomodate demand, and has just opened a 24 tap pub with local liquor for cocktails and a food menu centering around quesadillas.